


Cut Out My Heart, For It Belongs To You

by fineandwittie



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Blood, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misuse of cutlery, Period-Typical Homophobia, Tumblr Prompt, illya is a wide eyed puppy, our boy is hella good with knives, random intruders, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4738871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt: Illya used to think Napoleon was just a thief and he didn’t know how to fight cause he could almost choke him to death the first day they met. But one day when the trio stayed in their safe house and Napoleon was cooking in the kitchen, some robbers broke in. Napoleon seemed like he was not gonna do anything and just let them take what they want. But when Illya fight back and one of them shot him, Napoleon held up a kitchen knife and sliced it through that guy’s hand, started taking down every single one of them with just that knife. After that, Illya never underestimate Napoleon again. Especially with knives. Kitchen knives. P/S: “And they said I was scary”, Illya muttered when Napoleon took the bullet out for him that night. </p><p> </p><p>Some intruders shoot Illya. Napoleon does not approve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut Out My Heart, For It Belongs To You

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [割去我心，因為它屬於你](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6058503) by [notthechosenone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthechosenone/pseuds/notthechosenone)



> Unbeta'd. Written at 1 in the morning. Because I literally could not stop myself.
> 
> For http://sukiekagamine.tumblr.com 
> 
> Mostly rated for violence and a couple curses.

It had been a quiet day in a string of quiet days. So much calm put Illya’s teeth on edge. He never trusted it. Because of course, most of his life was a hurricane and this much calm just meant they were trapped in the eye. 

They were staying at a safehouse in Madrid, in between missions, and they’d settled into an odd sort of domesticity. The kind which he never expected Napoleon Solo to be capable of and to which the American had taken with relish. Gaby spent her time working on the radio and keeping the heater working. Solo cooked for them and did laundry. Illya did the washing up and any cleaning that needed doing. The first week, this was startling, but calming. He enjoyed it. Now, at the tail end of week two, it was beginning to drive him mad. It was a glimpse at a life he could never have. Domesticity with a man he could never have. Permanence with the two people he cared for most in the world. 

He wondered what their temporary neighbors thought. Whether Gaby was related to one of them or if they were a menage-a-trios or a couple of faggots using a woman to hide behind. Or he supposed a dozen other things. Perhaps it was his own perverted desires that led him to consider those possibilities first. He would be the first to admit that that was a strong possibility, though not aloud, of course. Because he did want that. He wanted Gaby to be happy. To find someone and be happy, but more than that, he wanted Napoleon. 

And it wasn't just that he wanted to know the feel of the man’s skin against his own. That he wanted to taste and lick and touch him all over, starting with his endearingly irregular teeth and continuing downward until he had his mouth around Napoleon’s cock. It wasn’t just that he wanted to lick Napoleon open and then fill him up again. Or to be filled equally by him. No, it wasn’t just that, though he desperately wanted all of that too.

No, he wanted to know what it felt like to wake to Napoleon’s head on his shoulder. To be free to come up behind him and slip his arms around the smaller man’s waist. He wanted to protect his Cowboy, who did not truly belong in this world of espionage that had snatched him up and made him cold. To stand between Napoleon and anyone who would hurt him, because he’d seen the man fight and he knew how quickly Napoleon would die when faced with an opponent who thirsted for blood. He wanted thoughtless touches, absentminded kisses, the casual intimacy that love and trust bring. He wanted Napoleon’s body, but not nearly as much as he wanted the man’s soul. 

These were the thoughts that distracted him on that quiet afternoon. Gaby was out in the garage, working on the car they’d arrived in, with her music loud enough to wake the dead. Napoleon was preparing dinner, using what he had explained at length was a Santuko knife to chop vegetables as a French Chef’s knife waited at his elbow to cut the meat. Illya was sitting at the kitchen table, silently dismantling their armaments, so he could clean them. Maybe the string of quiet days had made him complacent. 

Because when the group of masked men kicked in the door, every single one of the guns in front of him was in pieces. He would have needed at least thirty seconds to reassemble and load one of them, if he’d had any ammunition at hand. He didn’t. He shot to his feet, a snarl on his lips.

There were six of them, armed and speaking Spanish. Shouting things, making demands, that Illya couldn’t follow. They brandished a gun at him, waving him out of the way. He was standing between the men and Napoleon. He wasn’t moving.

“Espera! Espera!” Solo spoke Spanish, he remembered abruptly. The American sounded bored. “Toma lo que quieras. El dinero está en el dormitorio. Toma lo!”

Illya’s hands were shaking. The red haze was beginning to creep over his eyes. “Who are they?”

His words were low and vicious and his tone set the intruders on edge, making them shift nervously. 

Solo sounded unconcerned. “They’re bulgars. They want money. I don’t know why there are so many, but all they want is money.”

Illya twisted sharply, intending to call Solo on the obvious lie, but the movement had been a bad decision. One of the men, already antsy, reacted before he registered where Illya was moving to. A gun went off and time slowed down. Illya could feel the white-hot-cold-hot pain of a bullet passing through his body. He was barely more than a graze, only a handful of millimeters above collarbone, right through the meat of his shoulder. But it was a close range shot and the impact had him staggering back to hit his head against the wall. The blow dazed him. His blinking was sluggish because one moment, there were five uninjured men standing near the doorway and the next there was a Santuko knife protruding from the skull of the man who had shot him. He could feel his mouth drop open, but could do nothing to stop it. 

Napoleon entered his line of sight, chef’s knife in hand and an expression of absolute rage on his face. It was like nothing that Illya had ever seen before on anyone, never mind the usually mild-mannered American. 

There was an old adage in America: never bring a knife to a gunfight. 

Clearly whoever came up with that saying had never met Napoleon Solo. He was…nothing short of breathtaking as he sliced through the five intruders like so much butter. Within the time it took for the next man to pull the trigger of his gun, Solo was already in close, out of his range, burying the knife in his neck. Instead of slipping easily out of the flesh, Solo yanked it down, cutting a thick, jagged line across his throat, and took a face full of arterial spray for his pains. He pulled the knife free, spinning to kick the gun out of the neck man’s hands. By this point, the remaining three had realized that guns were useless, because their opponent was in too close. The man Solo had disarmed threw a desperate punch and lunged for him, but Solo had the knife fifteen centimeters deep in his chest before the blow could connect. Illya went a little fuzzy at that point and when his vision cleared again, the final two men were dead on the floor and Solo was gone. No doubt looking for the sixth intruder. 

Illya blinked rapidly and felt his entire world shift on its axis. He’d seen Solo fight, but never, never like this. If Napoleon had had a knife that day in the bathroom, Illya is now absolutely certain that he would have died, bled out on the filthy floor of a public men’s room. He swallowed, torn between fear, which after all is a healthy response to reflexes that deadly, and arousal, which is an unhealthy but not unexpected reaction to the realization that Napoleon Solo is absolutely lethal.

Footsteps squeaked across the kitchen floor and Illya opened his eyes. He didn’t remember closing them. Napoleon was covered in blood. It was splattered across half his face, sticky and thick in his hair. Illya wanted to lick it off. 

Napoleon blinked at him. “Er? Excuse me?”

Illya frowned. “What?”

Napoleon furrowed his brow and reached up to pull at one of Illya’s eyelids, checking his pupils. “You just said you wanted to lick the blood off my face.”

Illya felt his face go hot. He swallowed painfully. “No, I didn’t.”

Napoleon looked like he was fighting a smile, though worry lingered in his eyes. “Yes, Illya. Yes, you did. And by the look of your pupils, I’d say the concussion that blow to the head gave you has loosened your tongue.”

Illya’s eyes dropped to the floor. He need to think about something innocent. Something completely unrelated to Napoleon, because he honestly hadn’t realized he’d said that out loud. “I’ve no idea what you are talking about, Cowboy.”

Napoleon smiled indulgently. “Sure thing, Peril. Come on, up you go. I need to take the bullet out of your shoulder and we’ve got to take a closer look at your head.”

Napoleon led him into the bathroom and made him sit on the closed toilet, while he got out the first-aid kit. The bullet was lodged in the muscle, and it was only the caliber of the bullet that had saved it from blowing all the way through. Though extraction was going to hurt like a bitch. The snick of scissors brought him to the present again. 

“What are you doing with those, Cowboy?”

Napoleon blinked, confusion skittering over his face. “Peril, you can’t raise your arm with a bullet in your shoulder and I can’t take the bullet out while you're still wearing that shirt. I’m problem solving.” 

And before Illya could protest, Napoleon lifted the hem of his shirt and began to cut. Illya bit back a groan. This was definitely not the time to get an erection. Not with Napoleon so close. Not where Napoleon would see, would know. Because no matter how much Illya wanted him, no matter how much Illya loved him, loved him desperately, Napoleon Solo was a pathological womanizer. He had been known to ‘take one for the team’ as they say, seducing a male mark. But in the three years they’d worked together, this had only happened three times. Each time, Solo had returned, stripped off all his clothing, and spent over an hour in the bathroom. When he emerged, skin too pink and eyes too hollow, Gaby would pull him down into a seat with her and curl herself around him, until the tension his face relaxed and he was himself again. When this happened, Illya would feel sick, with impotent rage and the knowledge that Napoleon hated doing it. Hated sleeping with men. 

He wondered how Napoleon even managed to sustain an erection when he so clearly loathed the act, but he could never spend too long contemplating this or he’d end up destroying another hotel room. 

So he tried to concentrate on something else. Anything else. But images of Napoleon, knife in hand, blood glistening on his skin, kept flittering through his mind. The man had been the very image of Death come to collect his due. “And they say I’m the one to fear.” He’d murmured the last aloud, but he figured as incriminating statements go, it wasn’t the worst.

Except how it apparently was. Because Napoleon, who had been relaxed and easy with his touches since he’d helped Illya up from the kitchen floor, suddenly went rigid and backed off. Illya blinked in confusion and looked up. Napoleon’s eyes had that same hollow look in them, the one that required Gaby’s warm body to chase away. What had it come from? Had he grown erect without noticing? He thought he would realize, but no, that wasn’t it. What—

“You’re afraid of me now?”

Illya frowned. “What are you—?”

“You just implied that I’m the one to fear. That…you are afraid of me now. Before you thought you could best me in a fight, so you trusted me, but now? You know that I’d beat you, if I had a knife to hand, now, you think I’m going to kill you? Is that is? You—“

“Cowboy, no! I—“

“How can you not know that I—“

“Napoleon!” The man fell silent. Illya never used his first name. Not once. “Napoleon, I’m not afraid of you. But that does not mean that you are not frightening. Are you afraid of me?”

“Of course not!”

“There? See? I am frightening person. Everyone says so. When I…lose control of my temper, I do things that I regret. I…sometimes frighten myself. But you? I would never fear you. Not because you are not formidable opponent. But because you are Napoleon. You are Cowboy. You would not hurt me. Or Gaby. Of course, I trust you. It has nothing to do with whether or not I could beat you in fight.” Illya offered a very small quirk of his lips. “For record, I still could beat you in fight.”

The hollowness fled and Napoleon sagged against the counter he’d been leaning on. “Fuck.”

The curse was breathed with such feeling that it went straight to Illya’s cock. He gasped faintly and tried to fight his own reaction. He did not want to bring back that look, now that it was gone, but it was took late. Napoleon saw. Of course, he did. He was a thief before he was a spy and for both he needed to be the most observant man in any given room.

Illya’s cheeks went a dull red and he looked away, ashamed of his body and his poor control. A gentle, long-fingered hand cupped his hot cheek, turning his head back. He closed his eyes, savoring the contact and avoiding Napoleon’s gaze. 

“Illya…” The uncertainty, the painfully threadbare hope, that color Napoleon’s plea snapped Illya’s eyes open again. “Is that…Does that mean…”

He swallowed again, no less harshly. “Cowboy, I…I am sorry. I know that you do not…share my…perversion. I am—“

“What?”

Illya frowned and looked up into Napoleon’s eyes. He looked genuinely confused. “I…enjoy sleeping with men. You do not.”

Napoleon was frowning steadily at him. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”

Illya gaped at him. “Every mission in which you were required to—“

“That had nothing to do with the fact that they were men.”

“What then? What caused you to scrub yourself raw? What caused the emptiness behind your eyes if not that?”

Napoleon laughed, bitter and agonizing. “I’m not a whore. The CIA think its agents are above those kinds of jobs. Sleeping with someone for information or plans or whatever. How is that different than sleeping with someone for money? It isn’t. I don’t enjoy being a whore for Waverley’s Queen and Country. That’s what the Double-O program is for. Assassins who double as whores. It’s…I feel…They never forced me to honeytrap a woman, but my reaction would likely have been the same. I slept with Victoria because she was beautiful and it was the easiest was to throw off suspicion. It obviously only worked for a few hours, but it was my choice. Not an order.”

Illya stared some more. He could no more keep the desperate hope form his eyes and voice than he could force the sun to stop shining. “Then does that mean…”

Napoleon smiled a little and leaned forward, close enough to breathe Illya’s air. “Illya Kuryakin, you are a fucking marvel.” The words were purred nearly against Illya’s mouth, before the other man closed the scant millimeters and kissed him.


End file.
